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White Collar Wiki:Manual of Style
New article titles If the information merits a new article, following existing convention is a good rule of thumb: Proper names (people) * Whenever possible, use the full name of the character. ** If part of the name is discovered at a later date or corrected, the title of the article may corrected. * If the character goes by a very common nickname, maintain it in quotes ("). **Add a redirect by the nickname as well (see below). * If the character is know by his/her title, use only the given and/or surname in the article title (i.e.: "Kramer", not "Agent Kramer)" Symbols *Wikitext does not read symbols well--whenever possible, spell these titles out. **For example: Instead of "&" (an ampersand), use "and". Simplify *Generally, the simpler the title, the better. * Use "White Collar" in page titles only when absolutely necessary. Conventions within articles New Article Templates Use the following templates for new articles: *Template:How to create a Cast member page *Template:How to create a Character article *Template:How to create an Episode article *Template:How to create a Filming Location article *Template:How to create a Transcript article Episode Articles *Place the article in the appropriate category: "Episode #x##" and "Season #". *Add categories for each character that appears in the episode to increase the Episode Count tallies *Quotes should be simple and only a few lines long. They should point out any particular humorous or otherwise important moment in the storyline. Quotes should not be used in abundance to re-tell an entire scene (see below for transcripts). Categorize Please place the article in any of our categories with the following line of code: Category:Unsolved at the very end of the article. For the complete list of categories, see . Be as specific as you can with the categories. Remember that sometimes articles will fit into more than one category. Do not categorize user blog posts or theory tab articles. *If you are unsure what category your article fits in, you can leave it uncategorized. Sysops and others can use a special page for uncategorized pages to see a list of pages that have no category. The goal is to keep this list empty. Present versus past tense *Except for within episode articles, descriptions of events in the storyline should be written in the past tense. *Article biographies of living characters should begin in the present tense; biographies of deceased ones should begin in the past tense. *Picture captions should be written in the present tense, and should end with periods if they constitute complete sentences. Spelling and grammar Before submitting, use the Show preview button and read again what you wrote. You might find that you did not convey your idea as you wanted. Hit the preview button until you are happy and proud with your submission. *If you don't feel confident with your writing style, spelling and grammar, include the message "Proofread Me" in the edit summary, encouraging another active user to read and edit your contributions. *Utili'z'''e US English spellings. If British English spellings are used it is not a major priority to correct them but you may. *Do not change US English spellings into British English. The show is made in the US, and the site is updated to US airings. *'A picture is worth a thousand words'. If you can, put an image in your article. An image helps clarify the subject at hand. ''Caution: Do not litter an article with images. **See Template:Image for information about uploading and categorizing images. Redirection and list conventions Duplicate or redundant articles should not be created. A redirection page is one that automatically shunts a search for a particular keyword into another existing page; they can be created by typing only #REDIRECT Page name here in that article. Do not create pages with just lists of article links that duplicate existing categories. These should be redirected to the category in question by typing #REDIRECT Category:Name here (adding the first ":'" is necessary to avoid categorizing the redirect page back into itself). List articles should have some limited info aside from just listing links (such as episode info, etc), however, they should not go into a huge amount of detail of each item, rather linking to the main page where necessary. Some portals are list pages (that are aesthetically arranged to help aid the viewer in navigation). Transcript conventions A transcript page is a special page which records one listener's version of what is heard in an episode. The navigation template used at the top is ' , which forces the following disclaimer into the top field: ---- Transcripts should be crafted meticulously to record dialogue in a painstakingly accurate manner. However, in order to preserve the above disclaimer that they are unofficial (and due to the fact that complete fan-created transcripts are very time-consuming to generate), the author (if there is one primary author) may request page protection and indicate his or her name in small script below the header as follows: XXXX is responsible for this transcription. Transcript pages generally do not include wikification links, except for episode name, episode writer(s) and director(s).